I'm really sickened that they let Karla out. She helped her boyfriend drug and rape her sister, for pete's sake! And drugged her so badly that she died.

I think that Karla made a deal with the prosecutors to testify against Paul Bernardo in exchange for a lighter sentence, and that they really needed her testimony to convict him. After that deal was made the prosecutors obtained video tapes which implicated her to a much greater degree of guilt. Karla was young and pretty, and I don't think that the authorities fully realized that they were dealing with such a great evil. If the authorities had had the tapes earlier, the deal never would have been made.

The tapes were in the possession of Paul Bernardo's defense lawyer, who withheld them from the prosecution for 17 months. I don't think that he got into a great deal of trouble for not sharing them with the prosecution, although he was charged with obstruction of justice and acquitted. I hope that the penalties for a lawyer would be more severe for this here in the US - all of this happened in Canada.

I agree, unfortunately. The authorities had already made the "deal with the devil" and could not change Homolka's sentence even after the new evidence came to light.

I'm really sickened that they let Karla out. She helped her boyfriend drug and rape her sister, for pete's sake! And drugged her so badly that she died.

I think that Karla made a deal with the prosecutors to testify against Paul Bernardo in exchange for a lighter sentence, and that they really needed her testimony to convict him. After that deal was made the prosecutors obtained video tapes which implicated her to a much greater degree of guilt. Karla was young and pretty, and I don't think that the authorities fully realized that they were dealing with such a great evil. If the authorities had had the tapes earlier, the deal never would have been made.

The tapes were in the possession of Paul Bernardo's defense lawyer, who withheld them from the prosecution for 17 months. I don't think that he got into a great deal of trouble for not sharing them with the prosecution, although he was charged with obstruction of justice and acquitted. I hope that the penalties for a lawyer would be more severe for this here in the US - all of this happened in Canada.

I agree, unfortunately. The authorities had already made the "deal with the devil" and could not change Homolka's sentence even after the new evidence came to light.

Thinking about Homolka and Bernardo gives me this type of reaction:

"The psychopath is an intraspecies predator, and peoples’ visceral reaction to them—“they made the hair stand up on my neck”—is an early warning system driven by fear of being prey to a predator."

The quote is from this FBI article, and is actually foot noted to an article in the Journal of Threat Assessment 2.

i think that what always disturbs me the most are those cases of little kids who fall between the cracks - the cases of little children who are murdered or die in some stupid accident and after they are dead, it turns out that they lived a life of fear, terror, neglect, abuse, and the writing was on the wall only nobody was reading. so it's not just that they ended up tortured and dead, but their whole short lives leading up to their last day was a life full of strife. and all of a sudden after their death there are people talking about it, and investigations, and strangers leaving little teddy bears near the scene of the crime... seems like such a terrible thing that that little kid lived through life with no love and nobody reaching out and only after their death do people seem to care.

It happened in my hometown when I was in high school, in fact it was only by a few blocks that the victims went to a different high school than the one I went to. Classmates of mine knew the family though.

I was housesitting in the neighborhood that the crime happened in when I was reading a magazine and opened to an article about the BTK Killer, who had not yet been caught and was preying on women alone in their homes. Yeah...I left some lights on that night

There was another case that did happen to a classmate of mine who also volunteered at the same place I did--his father killed him, his older brother, their mom and then himself.

I think the biggest unsolved crime is why the monsters responsible for Jamie Bulger's murder were ever let out of prison and allowed new identities. Also the same goes for why was Baby P's mother ever released from prison.

As far as the Bulger killers go I hope that getting to kids when they're that young you should be able to rehabilitate them. I think they were/are both very damaged boys and remember they are both on parole and can be recalled at any time. Mary Bell was released from prison under an assumed identity and never re-offended.

one of the bulger killers has been, venables i think, was arrested and has to be given Another new identity(4th!!) as he was telling people who he was. oh and he was arrested this time because he had images of a graphic nature of children (google it too squicked out!)

This was years ago, I doubt I could even find the articles if I tried. A family had a bunch of kids and they neglected their infant daughter so badly that she died in her sister's arms. The sister was maybe 8 or so IIRC - she kept saying the baby was sick and dying and the parents kept ignoring her and telling her to shut up. By the time paramedics arrived rigor mortis had already set in and they had to pretend to go through the motions on the baby's dead body. I worked in a pet store at the time and I remember saying that I've seen mother rats show more concern for their young than that mother did for hers.

Her mother and stepfather tortured and beat her until she died, including drowning her. They put her in a blue plastic container and placed her body in a shed for two months before dumping her body in the gulf.

The mother and stepfather were convicted of murder and are serving life in prison.

The death and coverup of Caylee Anthony. My mentor was the expert called in on the case and I know some things about it from his insight and things we have learned in class. Mishandling of evidence by an FBI lab technician led to the mother not being convicted of her murder.

i think that what always disturbs me the most are those cases of little kids who fall between the cracks - the cases of little children who are murdered or die in some stupid accident and after they are dead, it turns out that they lived a life of fear, terror, neglect, abuse, and the writing was on the wall only nobody was reading. so it's not just that they ended up tortured and dead, but their whole short lives leading up to their last day was a life full of strife. and all of a sudden after their death there are people talking about it, and investigations, and strangers leaving little teddy bears near the scene of the crime... seems like such a terrible thing that that little kid lived through life with no love and nobody reaching out and only after their death do people seem to care.

so sad and true..

what is happening in my area now..last week a mother killed two or her three boys (ages 3 and 6) by drowning . She said that she she was "hearing voices" and that she felt she could be a better mother to her oldest boy without the other two.

After she was arrested and they looked back at her past they found out that about 10 months ago she backed over the two boys while they were in her driveway; she said she never saw them and thought they had gone back to the house; no charges were filed. Then a year or so before that she was charged with leaving one of the sons in a locked hot car

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when I first saw the title of this thread the first thought was Charles Manson/Sharon Tate

i think that what always disturbs me the most are those cases of little kids who fall between the cracks - the cases of little children who are murdered or die in some stupid accident and after they are dead, it turns out that they lived a life of fear, terror, neglect, abuse, and the writing was on the wall only nobody was reading. so it's not just that they ended up tortured and dead, but their whole short lives leading up to their last day was a life full of strife. and all of a sudden after their death there are people talking about it, and investigations, and strangers leaving little teddy bears near the scene of the crime... seems like such a terrible thing that that little kid lived through life with no love and nobody reaching out and only after their death do people seem to care.

You reminded me of the Lisa Steinberg case in NYC back in the 80s. Who was illegally adopted and beaten to death by her "father" while her adoptive "mother" dud nothing, and said, in her defense, she had been abused by him as well.

- The Soham Murders/Holly and Jessica - two 10 year old girls from Cambridgeshire who went out to buy sweets and never came back. It turned out the caretaker of their school had killed them, and his girlfriend, who was a teaching assistant at the same school, lied to the police and gave him a fake alibi. I think it really effected my parents because at the time I wasn't that much older than the two girls, and it was constant in all the media.

- Milly Dowler/The Levi Bellfield killings - another one that was in the news constantly after she disappeared was Milly Dowler, and it took years before she was linked to the man who was finally charged, Levi Bellfield. One of the murders, or at least the disappearance of a victim, actually took place near my school, and we didn't find out about it until after we'd moved to the area. It was quite disturbing to realise a serial killer had stalked an area I regularly walked past...

"I just wanted to know how it would feel like to shoot Grandma." -- serial killer Edmund Kemper after murdering his grandparents when he was 15 years old.

"One side of me says I'd like to talk to her and date her. The other side of me says I wonder how her head would look on a stick?" -- serial killer Edmund Kemper after being asked what he thought when he saw a young girl on the street.

"I controlled other people's lives, whether they lived or died. I had that power to control. After I didn't get caught for the first fifteen, I thought it was my right. I appointed myself judge, prosecutor and judge. So I played God." -- serial killer Donald Harvey

"God meant women for cooking, cleaning house, and sex. When they are not in use, they should be locked up." -- serial killer Leonard Lake

"I just hated seeing them standing there." -- serial killer and arsonist Ottis Toole explaining why he started burning down houses at the ripe old age of 6.

"Doesn't everyone do it?" -- serial killer and child molester Fred West after impregnating a 13-year-old when he was 20.

"The honest truth is, it's fun to kill people and if I was allowed to run loose I'd probably do it again. I have to say--I know it's going to sound sick, it's going to sound psycho, and I really don't think I'm that psycho--but it's kind of fun. Like riding a roller coaster." -- serial killer Carol Bundy

"We had a lot of fun with her. I was making her up like a Barbie with makeup." -- serial killer Carol Bundy talking about how she applied make-up and styled the hair of a decapitated head her partner in crime Doug Clark brought home.

"I love to kill people. I love to watch them die. I would shoot them in the head and they would wiggle and squirm all over the place, and then just stop. Or I would cut them with a knife and watch their faces turn real white. I love all that blood." -- serial killer Richard Ramirez

"I hope they let me do my hair in jail. I would just die if my hair went to hell." -- serial killer Karla Homolka in a letter to a friend

"Why is it wrong to get rid of some f#$%in' c-words?" -- serial killer Kenneth Bianchi

"I was very smooth, able to hurt somebody at any given time with no remorse and I could do it over and over again without it bothering me at all." -- serial killer/hitman Richard Kuklinski

"The only thing they can get me for is running a funeral parlor without a license." -- serial killer John Wayne Gacy

"Cut out her p#$%y and ate it. I was one sick person." -- serial killer Arthur Shawcross

"After my head has been chopped off, will I still be able to hear, at least for a moment, the sound of my own blood gushing from my neck? That would be the pleasure to end all pleasures." -- serial killer Peter Kurten before going to the guillotine

"I wish the entire human race had one neck, and I had my hands around it!" -- serial killer Carl Panzram

We had friends that lived about 2 blocks from John Wayne Gacy, I was 5 and their boys were about 10 and 15 at the time the investigation was going on. I didn't realize it till I was older (mid teens) and my mom and I were watching a TV movie about it. She told me that's why we weren't allowed to play outside at their house and why I was never allowed to go to a public bathroom by myself till I was about grown. I don't think my step mon ever really got over the proximity of someone that evil living by "regular" people

Any crime involving moms / parents and hut parting thier own children. I've read Anne Rule and followed several of the cases mentioned here and I can't fathom what state someone's mind would have to be in to do domething like that.

There was a case here in Maryland in 1999, when a man buried his 4-year-old daughter who had "accidentally died"; at the time there was nothing they could charge him with, because there was no law requiring a private individual to report a death, or one forbidding burials either on one's own property or on county-owned public lands. Neither an autopsy nor a toxicology showed a cause of death. Absent any evidence of foul play, the only thing he could be charged for was a misdemeanor of "dumping on public property."

I've always wondered if he got away with murder.

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~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Common sense is not a gift, but a curse. Because thenyou have to deal with all the people who don't have it. ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~